I'm always fascinated by the question of why Marie Cenac entered local politics

Trustee Cenac is very anti-government involvement in constituents' problems, which is interesting, since she takes up one of the precious six seats on the town board, which is ostensibly a local government entity, organized to protect and serve the local taxpayers. If you go back through any noise ordinance discussion over the past six years, you will find, without fail, when she buzzes in to talk (and she never feels uncompelled to share this laissez faire opinion), that she constantly and consistently lectures the audience on where they choose to live determining whether they have any right to complain. This is known as victim blaming - If you are raped, it is because of the way you dress, if your business is vandalized by a customer bent on destruction, it is because your windows aren't strong enough to withstand getting hit with a large rock, and, God forbid, if you can't tolerate 14 straight hours of 100+ decibel noise, it is because your ears are pansies and you picked the wrong neighborhood to work or live in. This is, of course, her ignorant approach to everything, that government is not the answer, that your two fists are the only answer, that a posse followed by a good old fashioned lynching solves every crime problem or outsider problem, that yelling at your neighbors to STFU rather than asking the police to intercede or asking the town government to draft a reasonable noise ordinance is the only true solution to your problem if you want to avoid $6000 hearing aids in the future. You live near an airport and are bothered by noise? Your problem. (Estes Park doesn't have an airport, but this old chestnut never fails to amuse her, and is on heavy rotation.) You live near downtown, because you can't afford a $1.2 million home in Carriage Hills? Your problem. You live near an insane individual who trims their hedges at midnight and chants to their dime-store gods at 5 a.m., who moved in to a rental in your neighborhood after you purchased your home? Your problem. If you can't solve it without involving the police, preferably by resorting to a violent personal attack, you are a weenie, and this is your problem. You believe in science and infectious diseases? Your problem. What is wrong with you, when you can solve all your problems by vacationing in Florida during the height of the "please don't travel unnecessarily" request. You are 14 years old and find yourself pregnant because a 70-year-old man sexually abused you? Your problem, and you are a liar. This is probably just a pillow under your blouse, and someone should gut punch you and solve both our problems. All of this is fine, if a little 18th century ignorant approach to witches, but fine in the sense that, while you can talk about this and feel justified at your local Klan meetings, you probably shouldn't be holding down one of the six trustee seats as a representative of wider beliefs in the surrounding community in the 21st century, unless you are honest enough to run on an "all government sucks" anarchy platform, when Trustee Cenac hasn't, twice.

Of course, when it comes to noise complaints, we have our seventh unelected trustee, the town administrator, who makes it abundantly, repeatedly clear that he doesn't want a noise ordinance based on that nasty decibel meter, which is influenced by wind and cars but mostly the perpetrators' unwillingness to admit they are too loud for a community that should be all about dark skies and quiet nights. Let them fight it out in court, the nuisance factor is enough to make them think twice, but no, our town administrator doesn't want any tickets written that might be challenged, or any noise ordinance that isn't entirely based on a police officer saying "No problem here" based on zero training, rather than holding a decibel meter up (similar to a cell phone taking photos of criminal behavior) to actually measure how big of a problem this is. If you want 24-hour techno-track raves in Estes Park, you should probably be the ones in Estes Park with the problem, and consider moving elsewhere, but Trustee Cenac and town administrator McCulkin have too few brain cells remaining making too few synapses to extend their air-tight logic into these dusty corners. Trustee Kirby has concerns about changing behavior, and how ordinances should change behavior. People still kill others despite lengthy jail sentences, and laws on the books that discourage this behavior. Obviously, these deterrents don't work, so it is long past time to take all these laws and punishments off the books. Trustee Special K wants Fruit Loops that force changes in behavior, so let's build indoor, sound-proofed stages for those who want noise, and giant echo-chamber amphitheaters containing the grinding rasp for the road construction she knows is coming and wants to come quickly, praise be to Ward and everyone else on the board ten years ago who took away the citizens' right to vote. Are these projects too expensive, likely to destroy established businesses and strangle local jobs to provide for out-of-town temp work? Write a grant, or organize a heavy-metal concert with proceeds going to the Kirby Changing Behavior Ordinance Fund. Then give the Stanley $30,000, Mountaintop Daycare $10,000 and let the 200 downtown businesses scrap like rabid dogs over the remaining $5000 allotted for business assistance. Or, just do what the STATE does, and have actual noise ordinances. Or, just do what OSHA at the Federal level does, and have restrictions on noise levels. That would require copying other entities, which we do as a local lazy government all the time except when we have a personal bug that involves actually protecting the health and well-being of our citizenry, epsecially when it comes to things we don't believe in, like gravity or evolution. Welcome to Estes Park, where the Wild West still exists, and your problems with a crooked sheriff or guns discharged in the air to scare away the darkies are problems best solved on your own.